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Raymond, as is his wont, sets up a strawman and proceeds to set it on fire pitching himself as a champion of "the just side".

It's a strawman, because in truth the only important part about Turing's life in view of his accomplishments is that it was cut short. i.e. his genius could no longer produce progress. Whether this would have been due to suicide, an accident, or murder is not relevant. It is not relevant because for the people under which his work was meant to be dissipated (people in the same field), the circumstances in which the results are produced are of no importance.

Because of the progress he produced he became a people's hero to his country. People think about and tell tales about their heroes and their lives and circumstances. Irrespective of the direction these tales take, the accomplishments stand on their own among his peers, to wit, those who can actually understand the accomplishments.

Whether people appropriate a part of a life of a hero to underline certain aspects of it, or deny parts of it to underline other aspects of it, matters not one iota.

The facts of the matter are. "The work of Alan Turing was seminal to the entire field of computer science." The rest is history, and, as sometimes happens with history, can be rewritten by whomever needs the pageviews.

"this sort of politically motivated myth-making diminishes the object of the myth"

And any sort of tug of war between two sides who purport to propagate "the true story" is part of this myth. Pretending otherwise is just disingenuous.

I read through some of the comments. Raymond is clearly arguing that Turing was not the victim of oppression. The mental gymnastics he contorts through to arrive at this conclusion are baffling.

English law punished homosexuality with chemical castration, but (according to ESR) Turing could easily have avoided this fate. Was Turing thus a "victim" of "oppression"? We're quibbling about words. Your notions of "victim" and "oppression" are simply different from ESR's. (Note: I'm confident that ESR isn't in favor of chemical castration for homosexuals.)

Apparently. I feel that if someone suffers due to a bigoted policy, then that person is the victim of oppression. He seems to think that it is not "oppression" if the person who suffers had an out. The mental gymnastics bit come in when he tries to gel that with what demonstrators suffered during the civil rights movement, which he does classify as oppression.

Was Einstein the victim of oppression? How about Feynman?

If "No", how does that jibe with your definition?

If "Yes", is being a victim of oppression necessarily that big a deal? (Both Einstein and Feynman seemed to do OK for themselves.)

(Note that nothing here excuses or condones the antisemitism that affected both Einstein and Feynman.)

Einstein fled Europe because of it. That seems like "a big deal" to me. That he "did OK" for himself afterwards does not somehow make having to leave your home continent less of a big deal.

They were both also victims of oppression, in different ways and to different degrees. A large number of people were and are.

More attention is paid to the oppression that Turing underwent because it seems likely that it was a major factor in his death. If Einstein's life had been ended at a young age, but after he had made contributions to physics that made clear what had been lost, his death and the circumstances around it would be a large part of what we remember about him.

Einstein fled Nazi Germany due to their anti-semitism. Are you actually trying to claim that Nazi Germany's oppression of Jews was not necessarily a big deal?

He could have easily avoided this fate? How? As far as I know, Turing's choices were either 1) chemical castration 2) prison 3) stop having sex with people he was attracted to. Which of those alternatives qualifies as "not oppression"?

You're arguing with ESR, not with me. ESR implies that there was another alternative. My role in this is to explain ESR's position and to defend its correctness assuming his premises are true. My role is not to defend his premises, which in fact I am unqualified to do.

Not sure I understand the point of that. Is ESR somehow less wrong for saying Turing wasn't a victim of oppression if he says this because he's mistaken about what Turing was faced with?

It's not clear to me that (3) was an option that would have helped him avoid (1) or (2): he was found guilty of a previous "crime," and (1) and (2) were his two options for punishment/"rehabilitation".

> English law punished homosexuality with chemical castration, but (according to ESR) Turing could easily have avoided this fate.

Yes, Turing could have chosen to go to prison instead. Would that have been better somehow? How were homesexuals treated in English prisons then?

Exactly. The fact that he (and his equally obtuse commenters) are actually taking it that far is what truly disgusts me.

If Einstein had been killed in the Holocaust I bet at least as much would be made of that as is made of Turing's homosexuality and the deadly consequences.

It is important that the British government, at the end, cared more about who he wanted to have sex with than his great mental capabilities, and thus destroyed this intellect well before his time.

Sure, it's not as important as Turing's important theoretical and practical work in computing. But that doesn't mean it's not important. It's a cautionary tale and one we should take to heart. How many potential geniuses are we stopping right now because of the unjust things in our society? What are we losing out on? It deserves some thought.

The premise of your comment is one of the main points disputed in ESR's essay, namely, the claim that Turing's death was related to his oppression as a homosexual. It's as if, despite Einstein not dying in the Holocaust, for political purposes people continued to speak as if he did.

And I think jgrahamc clearly countered Raymond's points there at the top of this thread.

Yep, exactly what I was going to say.

There's a certain mindset that delights in anything that goes against conventional wisdom. Sometimes this is really useful, but the thing is that conventional wisdom is actually right most of the time. A knee-jerk reaction to believe anything that goes against conventional wisdom is no better than a knee-jerk reaction to disbelieve it. A lot of people have this tendency, even very smart people. I'm sure I fall victim to it myself sometimes.

The "Turing didn't really commit suicide" article was perfect for that. It takes a classic story that's attained the status of modern (albeit relatively obscure) myth and turns it on its head. It's attractive for the same reason that articles about radiation being good for you, peak oil being a myth, and the civil rights movement being bad for minorities are attractive: they're intriguing ideas that make you feel smarter than the average joe, since they contradict what "everybody knows".

It's often pretty easy to pull off, too, because most people don't do much research into the things "everybody knows". "Everybody knows" Turing committed suicide by eating a poisoned apple. But few people know the details. Thus, when an article says that the apple was never tested for cyanide, it's extremely convincing, because few people are aware that it was found in Turing's stomach. Likewise, the article discusses Turing's cheerful mood in his last days as evidence against suicide, even though it's actually at best neutral if not evidence for suicide. But most people don't know that elevated mood prior to suicide is common, and not having researched the "everybody knows" story, they'll take it as evidence of the alternative theory.

It's an interesting phenomenon. People will go their whole lives knowing the official story but not knowing any details. Then one single article comes out with a few details and suddenly they're convinced that what they knew their whole lives was wrong, even without doing any further research on their own. I must admit that I went through this exact process with this story, reverting to a sort of generic detail-free skepticism a little while after reading the Turing-didn't-commit-suicide story, and only realizing how silly it was after reading jgrahamc's comment here.

Personally, I disregarded the story once it claimed that Turing being outwardly happy was evidence he was not suicidal. I thought it was well-known that someone may be suicidal and hide it from everyone. Once I realized the author didn't understand that, I had no trust in everything else he said.

Anyway, that's a good explanation of a phenomenon I have observed as well.

That got me as well, but it took some time to really take effect for some reason. I guess the rest of it was written well enough that I dismissed that one failing for a while.

You're arguing with ESR, not with me. My role in this is to explain ESR's position and to defend its correctness assuming his premises are true. My role is not to defend his premises, which in fact I am unqualified to do.

That's fine. I wanted the record to show that someone else had handily countered ESR's points.

Ok, then, imagine that Einstein had died in such a way that it was very plausible (likely even) but not ironclad certain that he had died in the holocaust. I think mikeash's point still holds.

There's a level of uncertainty under which, I agree, it would seem forced and I'd wish that folks would look for another exemplar. By my analysis, and from my perspective the circumstances of Turing's life and death are not so uncertain.

Dammit, I thought I copyedited this comment pretty thoroughly, but a stupid typo still slipped through:

    s/Not that/Note that/

So essentially ESR is butthurt that Turing is remembered for being gay. This somehow diminishes him. And Turing most definitely wasn't persecuted for being gay. It's just that he was prosecuted and forcibly treated with female hormones. In ESRs head, that's not persecution because he had the chance to get out of it, most likely by denying who he is, ie a gay man:

   Rather than confront Turing’s homosexuality, the British authorities
   from the arresting constable on up tried to look the other way and
   gave every easy out they could; Turing, through some combination of
   carelessness and self-destructiveness, took none of them.

Shorter esr:

   Silly queers should stay in the closet.

Has esr gone full mens' rights / misogynist while I haven't been paying attention?